Science operations are expected to begin in late June or early July.
The resulting light-collecting surface must be nearly perfect for Webb to function properly. If the finished primary mirror were the size of the continental United States, the biggest bump on it would be just an inch or two high, Straughn said.
Mirror-segment alignment is expected to begin next week, after Webb's optics and associated instruments get cold enough to allow such work to proceed. To guide mirror alignment, the Webb team will focus each of the 18 primary mirror segments on a bright, distant star. And they've already chosen this target — a sunlike star known as HD 84406 that's part of the constellation Ursa Major .," Lee Feinberg, the Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA Goddard, said in a different webcast event on Monday."You can't quite see it with your naked eye, but I'm told you can see it with binoculars.
After the primary mirror is set up, the Webb team will align it with the 2.4-foot-wide secondary mirror, which is so named because it's the second surface that photons will hit on their way into the observatory's four science instruments. That milestone will mark the end of the major mirror work, team members said.
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